As I’ve mentioned before, Colorado is a hotbed of recreational hearse activity. This means that today’s Junkyard Find— spotted at the Brain Melting Colorado Junkyard— might be able to find someone willing to brave the rust and get this super-rare hearse back among the living.Pontiacs built between World War II and John Delorean can be a bit frumpy-looking, with cheap-out features such as a big chrome strip down the hood to hide the fact that GM didn’t want to pay to make hoods out of one piece of metal, but then you look more closely and see all the great Indian-head decorations.Who doesn’t like an illuminated chrome hood ornament representing Chief Pontiac? Bad people, that’s who.This hearse is very, very, very rough.There’s no telling how long the right rear door has been sitting in the weeds, or how many seasons of snow have melted on the floors.But still, imagine having this brute on the street, maybe complete with vintage coffin in the back.

Next time I go to that yard, I’m bringing my real camera instead of the crappy point-and-shoot I used on this car. I got lucky on this shot and found a combination of light angle and exposure settings that worked on my clutch-dust-and-oil-contaminated LeMons pocket camera.

“with cheap-out features such as a big chrome strip down the hood to hide the fact that GM didn’t want to pay to make hoods out of one piece of metal”

Then how do you explain all of the other GM cars from the era that did not have chrome strips running longitudinally down the hood? They were just a misguided styling cue from R.M. Critchfield’s days as Pontiac General Manager. Pete Estes, brought in by Bunkie Knudsen, was the guy that got rid of the strips.

Neil Young (in)famously drove a ’48 or ’49 Poncho hearse named ‘Mort’ when he first came to New York and met Stephen Stills in the early sixties. Mort died somewhere in the middle of America on the trip back to Canada, and was immortalized in the song ‘Long May You Run.’ hmmmmm.

I checked a couple of more sources. Apparently, after the Buick hearse died, Young got a different hearse and drove that one out to LA, hoping to hook up with Stephen Stills, the two of them having met while Stills was playing in Canada. Stills was in a traffic jam in LA and saw an old hearse with Ontario plates and knew it had to Young. A month later, Buffalo Springfield opened for the Byrds.

I’ll blame my faulty musician brain for this one. Totally right… Mott was a 48 Roadmaster… But the famous Sunset Strip incident was a 53 Poncho hearse.

Can you imagine what the sixties would have been like if Neil had been driving, say, an old Chevy, and went unrecognized by Stills, back to Ontario? He was playing with Rick James at the time… Alternate universes are unfolding…

I knew I hadn’t dreamed this. I remember as a kid in the 60s that a local florist in Oklahoma used an old Pontiac hearse in her business. And lo and behold . . .

Would the Departed consider it a come-down to take that last ride in a Pontiac? Doesn’t propriety insist on a Cadillac, Lincoln or Imperial, or a horse-drawn conveyance with black plumes? And how far down-scale could one go? I could totally see a demand for a 1958 Plymouth Fury hearse. You would have to beat the customers away with sticks.

Love the details of the Pontiac ornaments. I remember that as far back as my family’s 1962 Bonneville, the symbol was a star burst, except in the middle of the horizontal speedometer was a red bright-light indicator of Chief Pontiac in profile. But no where else on the vehicle was he portrayed. Why did GM ditch such a magnificent symbol? Too long ago for political correctness. DeLorean?

Remember some models in the 1950s had Chief Pontiac hood ornaments THAT WERE TRANSPARENT WITH AMBER LIGHT BULBS AND GLOWED WHEN THE HEADLIGHTS WERE TURNED ON! That was the ultimate for this kid.